The Assault

9. THE DEAD DRAGON



[0830 hours]

[Exclusion Zone, Uluru Military Base, New Bzadia]

THEY SAW THE CRASH SITE LONG BEFORE THEY GOT TO IT.

It was just a thin tower of smoke in the distance, but with a word from Yozi, they changed course to investigate. The plume of smoke grew thicker, until they could see the crashed aircraft at its foot.

It was a mess. A type three, the one they called the Dragon. A huge and heavily armed jet fighter that made up for its lower speed and lack of maneuverability with an awesome range of weaponry.

Early in the Asian campaign, a single Dragon had taken on a wolf pack of Chinese jet fighters and sent them all crashing into the sea. This Dragon had not been so lucky.

Perhaps it was the sheer weight of numbers of the attacking human aircraft or just a lucky shot, but the jet had clearly been badly damaged and was trying to make its way back to an airfield in the northeastern quadrant when it had crashed.

Chisnall could imagine the crew nursing the injured fighter back home, realizing too late that the craft was past saving. That sickening feeling as, with the airfield in sight, the heavy airship just gave up and plummeted nose-first into the desert floor.

A plowed-up wave of dirt extended like two pleading arms from where the big plane had come to rest. The nose of the craft was gone, mulched into the dirt by the weight of the plane behind it. The rest of the plane lay broken and twisted, jet fuel leaking from a broken line on one of the wings. Wires and tubing, the intestines of the great creature, spilled out from a jagged rent along one side. The innards were scattered across a hundred meters of desert.

Zabet steered the patrol vehicle around in a sweeping curve and brought them up alongside the plane, just outside the wave carved in the dirt.

“Perhaps a little more distance might be wise,” Yozi murmured. Zabet, eyeing the pool of jet fuel a few meters away, quickly complied. They stopped about twenty meters from the plane and dismounted.

Five minutes was all it took to confirm that if the crew had still been on board when the plane had crashed, then they were now part of the desert. They wouldn’t have had a chance.

Yozi scanned the desert in the direction from which the big plane had come.

“If they ejected,” he said, “they will be out there somewhere.”

“What about their personal locators?” Kezalu asked, peering up under the tail section.

“Jammed, like everything else,” Yozi said. “We should have a look, in case they are lying out there, injured.”

He glanced at Chisnall as if seeking approval, but it was clear that the decision had already been made. They climbed back on board the Land Rovers and started by following the furrow of dirt left by the fuselage of the plane. When that trailed out, they continued on the same compass heading.

Yozi scanned the desert to the left with his binoculars, and Chisnall did the same to his right, although he felt the search was futile. The desert here was dotted with low scrub, and there was little chance of finding anyone. A rotorcraft could cover the same ground in a matter of minutes and would have a far better chance of spotting any pilots, if they had even got out of the plane in time.

He said as much to Yozi as they approached the outer perimeter fence.

Yozi said, “Of course, but it would have been wrong of us not to try.”

Chisnall nodded. That was exactly what he would have said, under the same circumstances. He found himself warming to Yozi, despite everything.

Yozi made a circling motion in the air with his finger, and the Land Rover slowed and turned back on its tracks. Kezalu was humming to himself again. He opened a utility pocket on his uniform and pulled out a slab of bakki, a Bzadian snack that looked like dried beetroot. He noticed Wilton watching, broke off a section, and offered it to him.

“Your soul is warm.” Wilton gave the formal Bzadian thank-you and placed his hand correctly over his heart.

“It’s a little old and chewy,” Kezalu said.

Wilton took a mouthful and grinned. “After a week of combat rations, it’ll taste like mother’s milk!”

The kid was good, Chisnall thought, using Bzadian slang effortlessly.

They traveled in silence for a while; then Yozi signaled for the vehicles to stop.

Slowly, they pulled to a halt. The dead Dragon was slumped pitifully in front of them, a few hundred meters away.

Yozi scanned the desert to the west.

“You’ve seen something?” Chisnall asked.

“Was that a movement?” Yozi asked.

Chisnall stared. He could see nothing, just seemingly endless desert and gray-green scrub. Something was wrong. A warning bell clanged inside his head. He turned back quickly to find the snout of Yozi’s sidearm pointing directly at his right eye.

The universe seemed to stop moving. A bird above them was cut off midcry, painted onto the backdrop of the sky. Dust particles froze in the air around them, shining in the sun like pinpricks in the skin of the world.

“Azoh!” Chisnall said. “What is this?”

“Who are you?” Yozi asked. When Chisnall did not immediately reply, he added, “Tell your squad to place their weapons on the ground. Now.”

“There is no need for this,” Chisnall said. “We are soldiers of the Thirty-Fifth Scout Battalion. We—”

“No, you are not,” Yozi said. “I don’t know who you are, but you are not from the Thirty-Fifth.”

“But—”

“You wear the insignia, but not the Moscow Medal. Every soldier in the battalion was given one after the battle for Moscow. They wear it with pride.”

Chisnall thought fast. “My squad did not fight in Moscow. We were on—”

“It was a battalion-wide commendation. All members wear it. Except you. Goezlin noticed it too.”

So that is what made the PGZ man suspicious.

“You did not know where your headquarters were. Any soldier would have known that from the first hour, let alone the first day. You asked about Uluru. Every soldier is told on their first briefing on arriving on the base never to ask about Uluru.”

“We …” Chisnall’s voice deserted him.

“And just now your man said you had been on combat rations for a week. But the Thirty-Fifth have been on rest leave in Perth since Moscow. They arrived here yesterday. If you’ve spent a week on rations, then you’re not from the Thirty-Fifth. So who are you?”

Chisnall stared at the other soldier. Taking his time. Giving the outward appearance of calm. Any sign of panic or desperation would only make matters worse. In fact, he thought, the best defense might be to go on the offensive. Try to keep Yozi off balance.

An idea occurred to him.

“Very good,” he said at last. “Admirable, in fact. You have exceeded our expectations.”

Exactly what those expectations were was beyond him at that moment, but he was sure he would think of something.

Yozi frowned and the weapon lowered slightly. “Which unit are you from?”

Which unit are you from? He may have been suspicious, but Yozi still did not consider the possibility that they were humans.

“Obviously not from the Thirty-Fifth.” Chisnall allowed himself a smile. “Let me ask you this. Who do you think we are?”

Yozi blinked a few times in quick succession. Clearly, whatever answer he had been expecting, he had not been expecting this. Chisnall leaned back against the sidewall of the vehicle and relaxed, outwardly at least. He tried his best to look like someone who was in charge, not someone who feared for his life.

“Who are you?” Yozi tried again. He sounded less sure of himself now.

Brogan joined in the masquerade. “You tell us.”

Yozi lowered the weapon until it was pointing at Chisnall’s chest. “You’re not PGZ.”

“I would have thought that was obvious,” Chisnall said, idly allowing his left hand to rest on his belt, on top of one of his frag grenades.

“Fezerker?” Yozi asked. He frowned again.

Above them, Kezalu’s mouth dropped open.

Since the start of the war, there had been rumors of an ultrasecret, ultradisciplined alien Special Forces unit. The Fezerkers, operating in secret behind enemy lines.

Whenever something went wrong for the humans—a training accident, a mysterious fire, a faulty missile—it was always thought to be the work of the Fezerkers.

Nobody had ever seen them. No human knew if they really existed.

Until now.

Chisnall stared Yozi straight in the eye and wondered how far he could push this. “Do you know how we recruit new members?” he asked, hoping that there wasn’t a recruiting office in every city.

“I only know that you cannot apply,” Yozi said.

“You are correct.” Chisnall was ad-libbing freely now, and he had worked one of his fingers into the pin of his grenade. “You do not find us. We find you. Understand?” He leaned forward and stared deeply into Yozi’s eyes.

Yozi’s black eyes widened a little. Chisnall was playing to his ego, making him think he had been noticed.

“We were put next to you to evaluate you in action, without you knowing it. The whole thing was just a setup.”

“But the prisoners?”

“We borrowed them from the PGZ. You just returned them for us.”

“So Goezlin knew who you were?”

“Of course.” Chisnall smiled. “He is an old friend of mine.”

Chisnall glanced around. The other patrol vehicle had pulled up about twenty meters away, and Alizza was aiming the fifty-cal right at him.

“You have proof of who you are?” Yozi asked.

“I was wondering when he would ask.” Brogan injected a faint note of criticism into her tone.

“Please show it to me,” Yozi said.

“You think we should keep it on our uniforms?” Chisnall asked. “Perhaps a flashing sign on our helmets?”

“No, of course not,” Yozi said. His gun was now pointing loosely at the floor of the vehicle.

Time to take control, Chisnall thought.

“Your weapon, soldier,” he said in a disapproving tone. “It is no longer covering me, but I have not yet proved my identity to you.”

“Perhaps our optimism was a little premature,” Brogan said.

Yozi looked down at his gun and immediately brought it back up toward Chisnall.

“The proof of your identity,” he demanded.

“Better,” Chisnall said. “The proof is here.”

Chisnall reached down for his backpack and unclipped the top. He started to reach in and glanced at Yozi, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s enough,” Yozi said. “Pass the pack over here.”

“Of course,” Chisnall said.

“What is in here?” Yozi asked. He put down his weapon so he could accept the pack from Chisnall.

“A dingo.” Chisnall said the code word and dived over the side of the vehicle, the grenade pin in his hand.

Yozi stared in the pack for half a second, registering the grenade inside and the fact that the safety lever was gone.

Chisnall hit the dirt, conscious of Brogan and Wilton a nanosecond behind him. He scrabbled his way through the dirt away from the vehicle, desperate for every inch.

“Grenade!” Yozi yelled. He jumped sideways out of the vehicle. Zabet reacted instantly but Kezalu was slower. He hauled himself up, then seemed to get stuck on something, trapped for a moment in the machine-gun well, his eyes wide with panic. He wrenched himself free, jerked his feet up out of the machine-gun well, and leaped awkwardly from the platform, but it was already too late.

The grenade exploded. The Land Rover seemed to bulge in the middle, inflating like a metal balloon before tearing apart. The explosion was followed immediately by a hollow boom and a ball of flame from the fuel tank.

The heat rushed over Chisnall’s head like a blanket, smothering him. Then it was gone. There was a dull thud in front of him and he opened his eyes to see a jagged shard of metal embedded in the desert an inch from his nose.

Lucky once again.

He was already moving, twisting over and sitting up, even as the flash of heat dissipated around him. His coil-gun whipped out of its back holster into his arms. As fast as he thought he was, he found Brogan already on her feet, her weapon steady on Yozi.

Zabet was lying in a heap near the fiercely burning Land Rover, unmoving. Dazed or dead—there was no way of knowing.

Chisnall turned to the second Land Rover, just in time to see Alizza fly through the air and land face-first on the desert floor while Monster roared and raged like a wild animal behind him. There had clearly been some kind of fight, and it was just as clear who had won. Monster was already climbing up onto the fifty-cal, while Price had the other two Pukes covered with her rifle.

His own weapon sprang into his hands as Chisnall jumped to his feet and ran around to the other side of the vehicle. As he reached its edge, he stopped. There was no need to hurry. Kezalu had been in midair when the grenade had exploded, perhaps half a meter from the Land Rover. He had not stood a chance.

Chisnall walked back around to Zabet and found her dazed and moaning. She was bleeding from the nostrils, but alive. He prodded her with the muzzle of his rifle until she was conscious enough to realize what was happening, then herded her over toward Yozi.

Brogan kept her gun on the two of them while Chisnall walked back to the second Land Rover and disarmed the three soldiers there. Alizza was still spitting out dirt from his headfirst dive into the desert.

A moment later, Yozi’s remaining soldiers were sitting in a group, under the watchful eye of Monster on the fifty-cal. Chisnall walked back to where Kezalu lay. His body armor had been shattered by the explosion, and blood was being sucked out of his body by the dry sand of the desert. His eyes were open, though, and his breath was a soft whimper.

His eyes found Chisnall’s. They held a quiet question.

Chisnall sat on the dirt next to him and said nothing. Three years of training, but nothing had prepared him for this. This was up close. This was personal. Friend or enemy, it no longer seemed to matter. What was ebbing away in front of him was a life, a living being. He began to hum the soft, sad, syncopated song that Kezalu had sung on the drive. After a moment, the edges of Kezalu’s lips twitched up into an almost-smile.

Then he died.


Chisnall called the others over into a huddle, out of earshot.

“We are Oscar Mike in five mikes,” he said.

“What are you going to do with the prisoners, LT?” Brogan asked.

A gentle wind murmured around them, bringing with it the smell of the salt lake to the north. The sun had brushed away the cool air of the previous night with a single sweep of morning and sweat began to trickle down the back of Chisnall’s neck.

He knew what Brogan was asking. Leaving Yozi and his squad alive would not only compromise the mission, but it might also jeopardize the whole Angel program. If the enemy worked out that humans could disguise themselves as aliens and infiltrate their military bases, they would make security so tight that not even a flea could get in, unless it could prove its off-world ancestry.

“Tie ’em up. Make it secure,” he said.

“That’s it?” Brogan asked.

Chisnall glanced over at Yozi. “I’m not sure I can kill an unarmed man.”

“Not even a Puke?” Price asked.

“I think I could,” Wilton said.

“Really, Blake?” Chisnall asked. “Are you really up to cold-bloodedly shooting an unarmed soldier in the face?”

“I think so,” Wilton said. “A Puke, anyway.”

“And the women?” Chisnall asked.

Wilton’s mouth moved a couple of times, but he said nothing.

Chisnall looked around the group. “They don’t know who we are. As far as they know, we are a renegade bunch of Pukes. We’ll tie them up securely and leave them here. By the time they are found or work themselves free, we’ll be long gone.”

“You tie them up out here without food or water and you might as well put a bullet in their heads,” Price said. “In fact, that might be kinder. It could be days before they’re found.”

Chisnall locked eyes with her but said nothing. After a moment she glanced away.

What the desert did to them was the desert’s business.

Brogan was staring at him with a strange look in her eye.

“Are we okay?” he asked.

Brogan shrugged, and the others nodded.

They stood, and Chisnall walked over to the group of Bzadian soldiers.

“Why?” Yozi asked.

“That’s not important,” Chisnall said. He regarded the other soldier for a moment. Two professional warriors, divided by war and one percent of their DNA. In another universe, they might have been friends. “We will tie you and leave you here, and when we get back to base, we will have a rescue party sent out for you.”

That last part wasn’t true, but it was better to give them hope, Chisnall felt. “Strip off their ID tubes,” he said. Even if they somehow got free, they would get nowhere without their ID tubes.

Yozi was shaking his head. “This makes no sense,” he said.

It wouldn’t, Chisnall thought. As long as Yozi was convinced they were Bzadian, it wouldn’t make sense, and that was the way Chisnall wanted it. Better that Yozi think them crazy than realize they were humans.

Yozi looked at the body of young Kezalu, lying nearby. He turned back to Chisnall and his blue-black pupils burned. “It would be better for you if you killed us,” Yozi said. “I will come after you.”

Chisnall nodded. “I know.”

Yozi stared at him for a moment, then held up his hands to be tied.


As soon as they were out of sight, Chisnall held up his hand, and Price, who was driving, pulled over. He took off his helmet and reached inside. He felt around until he found the raised bump that was the secret catch and lifted out the liner. Inside were six packs containing uniform markings. He took out five. Hunter wouldn’t need his.

“Replace your insignia with these,” he said. “We just changed unit.”

The simple image on the patches was recognizable in any language.

“Bomb disposal,” Wilton said. “I’m getting a real bad feeling about this.”

“There’s too much going on around here that I don’t know about,” Brogan complained as she fixed the patches on her body armor. “If you had been killed back there, none of the rest of us would have had the slightest idea of what to do next.”

“Stay tuned,” Chisnall said. “You’re about to find out. For now, get the fifty-cal down from the top mount and hide it in the back. Bomb techs don’t drive around with fifty-caliber machine guns on their top deck.”

“One thing I do know is that we’re going to be in a huge pile of alien doo-doo if they get loose,” Brogan said, glancing back toward where they had left Yozi and his troops.

“True that,” Chisnall muttered. Had he done the right thing in leaving them alive?

Almost certainly not.

Perhaps he was not the right person to lead this mission.